Culinary memories

An interview with Julia Collin of America's Test Kitchen

April 25, 2016

Dan Leicht,

Rochester native Julia Collin Davison is set to take over cohosting duties on the popular Boston-based public broadcasting show America’s Test Kitchen early next year. She’s been on the show since its beginning in 2001 and looks forward to filling the role left behind by Christopher Kimball. With her sixteen-year ATK run, time in culinary school, and tasty experiences growing up in Rochester behind her, she’s more than ready to take on the task. I spoke with her by phone recently. This conversation has been edited for space and clarity.

India House. We’ve been going there since I was a little kid—I always try and make it there. It’s a restaurant on one side, and they used to have a store on the opposite side where you could buy all kinds of ingredients. Recently when I went home my parents took me to a new pizza place across from Pittsford Plaza called Pizzeria Favo where you walk in, stand in line, and they make the pizza right in front of you and call your name. It was really good. My parents love taking us to a restaurant in Wegmans.Amore—they have good soups with escarole and chickpeas, and they have nice wine flights, so we usually go there and everyone’s happy. My daughter’s happy—she gets a pizza—everyone gets what they want—it’s nice, easy.

We often went to the Aladdin’s on Monroe. When I was a kid there was a Plum House there, too, that we used to go to. Then there was another place—I think it was vegetarian—and my mother tricked me because I would do anything for a pastrami sandwich as a kid. We used to go to Fox’s Deli, and she said “Oh, we’re going to a new deli,” and took me to a vegetarian place, and it was vegetarian pastrami or something, and I was like “What is this? You tricked me!” For holidays we used to go to the Spring House, and one of my first jobs was working there, and my brother as well. I was a hostess, and I think he was a busboy. We did that in high school.

The format of the show is not going to change much, and when we realized we needed to have a new host on the show we went about it in a scientific manner—that’s how we tackle everything around here: our recipes, testing, and all that. We created a whole bunch of screen tests where we did these mini shows. We did them over and over with different people playing the role of the host, and host combinations, like: What it would be like with two hosts? Then we cobbled them together and we did intense focus groups with our steadfast hardcore viewers. We did focus groups in Boston, of course, but also New York and Chicago. They were vocal; they told us exactly what they liked about the show, what they didn’t want to change at all, and what was open to change in their minds. Their feedback was very clear. The format of the show is going to stay the same—they don’t want that to change—we’re going to keep all the tastings and testings, and they really liked it when Bridget and I were together as hosts, and when we cooked together.

Most of all I’m just really excited, but I’m also very cautious that it’s a big change for viewers, and I’m cautious of having a pair of big shoes to fill. Bridget and I both do—that’s why there are two of us. I hope viewers are open to the differences Bridget and I bring when you compare us to Chris [Christopher Kimball, host of the show since 2001], but I also think we’ll be fun. We want to show more of the test kitchen and more of the people in the test kitchen, because in previous seasons it looked like there was one guy in charge of a small handful of cooks. The test kitchen is a huge place with well over thirty cooks cooking recipes, testing equipment, and taste tasting ingredients daily in a very intelligent and collaborative manner. We want to show more of those people, we want to show more of the process, and we really want to open more of the doors of the test kitchen to show what it’s like to work here because that’s cool—that’s what we think is cool.